


A Life Well Lived

by BittaWriting



Category: Dani and Jamie The Haunting of Bly Manor
Genre: Closure, F/F, Love, NotReallyThough, bestillmyheart, kindafluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:09:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27411745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BittaWriting/pseuds/BittaWriting
Summary: *Before you get started, I think this is the happiest ending possible, following on from where the show left off. I hope it gives ye all some peace!**Jamie had decided to live as much as she could, to experience everything the world could offer. She did this, believing that Dani was there with her for every moment of it. Jamie filled her life with experience, not to fill a void, but to ensure that Dani could see it all too, experience everything that had been taken away from her. She would feel everything for Dani.When she finally meets Dani again, she learns of how her love and dedication has saved them both and given them a lifeline.
Relationships: Dani and Jamie - Relationship
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	A Life Well Lived

**Author's Note:**

> Though it is absolutely blissfully beautiful, I really can’t get the sadness of Dani and Jamie’s ending out of my head. 
> 
> 3 major reasons for this, firstly just the utter desolation of Jamie losing the love of her life and knowing why she couldn’t save her and why she was so noble for going. Secondly Dani losing the love of her life, or at least the opportunity to be with her, known and physically present. Thirdly, and perhaps worse, Jamie knowing that time will eventually take her as she ages, but knowing that she will be leaving Dani on this earth, trapped in the lake, remembered by few despite her unbelievable sacrifice. I JUST CAN’T ABIDE BY THAT. So I have thought it out, for a very lengthy period of time and come up with what I think is a reasonable solution based on the following:
> 
> \- We know Jamie and Dani’s love was stronger than the hatred of the Lady in the Lake. If this wasn’t just naturally obvious, we can be guaranteed of this by the fact that Dani would sacrifice her own life to ensure the safety of others, especially Dani. The greatest sacrifice of all to protect love and completely opposite to that of the Lady’s motivations. Yes she may have gotten the better of Dani in life, but I know this would not be the case when they were both in their supernatural form. (I feel silly for writing that but there ya go.) 
> 
> \- We also know that the lady of the lake was fading over time, hence her features dissolving. This had taken a few hundred years let’s say, but it does mean that there is an eventual end to her, fading to nothingness. And what was holding her there? Her vengeance, her anger, her desire to hurt. 
> 
> \- So what would be holding Dani there? Her desire to stop the lady in the lake from hurting anyone; Dani is held there in part by the lady but mostly by love. We can assume that having spent several hundred years in the lake before Dani, the lady in the lake will also vanish from existence several hundred years before her.
> 
> \- Jamie, for all her life, would wait for Dani to show herself, though she never would. But what about after life? What if Jamie too, was so tied to this world by love, that she couldn’t leave without knowing Dani was at peace?

\- The following is a short piece which gave me some closure. I just needed to write it and see it all actually happen in my head. I haven’t written Jamie’s entire story but here’s a brief overview to give context:Jamie had decided to live as much as she could, to experience everything the world could offer. She did this, believing that Dani was there with her for every moment of it. Jamie filled her life with experience, not to fill a void, but to ensure that Dani could see it all too, experience everything that had been taken away from her. She would feel everything for Dani.She travelled to every corner and wherever she could, working in gardens, parks, forests. And she made friends, Jamie laughed with people. She saw Dani’s goodness in the generosity of strangers, the enthusiasm of locals giving her directions, the goofy humour of other wayfaring travellers in hostels. She had a good life and she recounted all these moments to Eoin over the phone wherever she went.Wherever she could, Jamie planted a moonflower, spending enough time in a place to cultivate it, care for it and then visiting on the nights it bloomed. When the final night came and the last bloom fell, she would go, moving on to the next place.And like her flowers, Jamie’s own time came. 60 years of life, filled up for her love. It had shocked Jamie to find that there was wonder left in the world without Dani in it, but even with all that wonder she was not sad to go. In some ways Jamie had been waiting for this moment. She had friends bring her to Bly, where she died peacefully, surrounded by plants and stroking her wedding ring, still on her finger. In the room there was a small vase of moonflower and several mirrors, her bed was facing the door which she had ordered stay slightly ajar. She felt that she waded into death, this time smiling, this time calm. She knew she would be with Dani again, that she could not leave until she was. (…into the main story, sorry this is so disjointed)

Dying, she thought, felt much like floating. She was so thankful to those friends and family who had stayed with her all these years and helped her in her last moments. She was grateful to them also for listening to her stories of Dani, knowing that at least for now, they would both me remembered, as they had been, full of love. 

The floating didn’t feel forceful, but there was a definite current, a feel of a direction. But, without much effort Jamie found herself stopping, stationary, neither pulled nor moving backward. It was a new sensation, something she couldn’t explain but which simply was apparent to her - she wasn’t immobile exactly but she was also not falling and not floating. She thought of motes of dust in a ray of sunlight; but she didn’t feel like the dust, she felt like the light - immaterial, ethereal and still very much there.This new awareness settled onto her in the briefest moment before she heard her. 

“Jamie.”

Standing, all denim and pastel pink at the door, was Dani. Her beautiful eyes, brimming with tears, set to race down her cheeks to the trembling smile. 

Jamie could scarcely move, transfixed on the image in front of her. Perhaps she was still alive and simply gone mad? But she knew this wasn’t true. She sensed it. And yet she felt if she moved an inch she might disturb the glorious image in front of her, lose her again. She felt she might stay here fixed in this spot forever more if Dani would do the same.

But she didn’t, Dani moved, she took a step forward and extended her hand into the small space between them, several steps was all. “It’s ok my love, I’m here, you’re here, it’s ok.” Dani was softly crying now, her tears glinting where they clung to her eyelid, then leaving trails down her cheeks. She blinked them away, but her smile never faltered.

Her eyes, different, brighter? No, Jamie saw it then, the left, which had taken on the hazel hue was different now, it wasn’t quite blue, but it seemed markedly less brown.

“Dani” she managed, quietly, not knowing until she heard her own voice that she could still speak. Jamie felt that she was trembling now, this petrified her, what if she shook too hard and it sent Dani floating off into a million dust particles? Yet somehow she knew that wouldn’t happen, this new awareness slowly sinking into her. 

“I brought you moonflower love” she managed and she took two shaky steps. She realised she was crying now too, but more so she realised that she could feel the tears trickling on her skin. She could feel it. “I didn’t know… I.. I didn’t know if you’d get to.. to see them”, Jamie stammered, now no more than a step from Dani, her Dani.

Dani broke into an otherworldly, glorious smile, a touch of a chuckle, gulping as she says “I see them, I see them… I.. I’ve seen them all, Jamie. Every one. Th..thank you.” 

It is Dani who reaches forward first, her hand gently cupping Jamie’s face. Jamie feels it, every particle of her being feels the warmth rolling across her skin, tingling euphorically with the realisation that they are here, this is real. Jamie catapults herself into Dani’s chest, throwing her arms around her, sobbing and laughing simultaneously, curling her hands in fistfuls of fabric and blonde hair, pressing her face to Dani’s with as much force as she can muster.

The pair fitfully pull each other closer, as if they intend to merge themselves at some molecular level, melting into one another entirely and bodily. They breath each others names, sometimes onto skin, into the air or onto the others lips. Desperate hands seek out cheeks, retracing every millimetre of skin on the beloved face. Jamie rubs tears from Dani’s eyes, as Dani soothes Jamie’s shaking face to stillness. They stay here as close as they can, nose to nose, stealing soft kisses between repeated “I love you’s” and the murmuring of names. 

With her head tucked tightly into Dani’s neck, Jamie softly whispers “I knew you were here Poppins, I knew you’d be here when I caught up. I knew you were there, I just, oh Dani I’ve missed you so much sometimes I didn’t know if it was going to kill me.” Dani’s jaw tightens as she hears the pain in her loves voice, even though she had watched it all, felt all the anguish herself a million times alongside her. Dani murmurs comforts as Jamie continues, “But it actually kept me going you know? I hope you don’t mind that it wasn’t boring at all actually love, all of it, I wanted you to see it all Poppins. Did you see it Dani, did you see everywhere we went?”

Soft tears, sprung by adoration and an endless gratitude, mingling with a softer laugh, “Not at all boring. Every moment my love, you brought every moment back here to me. My Jamie, I’m so glad, you stayed, you did so much my love..” Dani murmurs more thank you’s and adorations into Jamie’s ear. 

After an immeasurable amount of time, Dani brings Jamie’s face in front of hers, “Would you like to come sit with me in the greenhouse my love?” Jamie nods, only now becoming aware of the world around them, or not so much around them as past them as she now feels it. Keeping a firm grip on Dani, she turns her head to survey the room, where her friends and family are still, some now standing, embracing those who are tearful, but there are smiles too, beneath teary eyes. A young man sits on the bed, blocking her view of the person lying there. He holds a small, weathered hand in his. Jamie smiles, the young fellow is Conny, a once delinquent-turned-green-thumb who will now be running Jamie’s flower shop. He still has dirt under his nails, Jamie scoffs, never could get that boy to scrub properly. ’Safe hands though’ she thinks to herself, ‘Good luck, Conny.’

“Come on, love. Funerals, you know, for the living,” Dani smiles gently and holds Jamie’s hand. There is no need for a final glance around the room, no desire to keep some fragment of herself there, Jamie knows love and knows that it is truly what keeps us alive. She turns and follows Dani out, through familiar hallways, down familiar stairs and into the beautiful evening air.

The greenhouse is much the same - new plants and the couch has been changed, various tools and benches scattered around the place, but for all intensive purposes, they could be walking back into one of their first moments together. It seemed fitting, Jamie thought, to start here again, together.

“It seems so long and also not at all now,” Jamie says, curled around Dani on their couch. 

“Hmm” Dani agrees, planting kisses onto Jamies hair. “I think this time, we can keep it proper boring,” kissing along Jamie’s jaw, settling into her neck.

“Do you Dani?”, the first inflections of anguish could be heard in Jamie’s voice, at the thought that were would be any alternative to boring.

“Yes love, it’s different here, I’m.. different”, Dani places her hand on her chest, continues, “When I left, I wasn’t… me. Not fully, I could feel it. But everyday here, I’ve been more myself.”

Dani pulled Jamie’s face towards hers, kissing her deeply, immersing herself in it. She breaks from the kiss to say “And you see love, I think it was you.”

Jamie is noticeably confused and Dani continues, “Every moment you lived Jamie, I was so full of joy. It hurt, it hurt so bad, but you were so alive and you were living for us Jamie. You were living for me and you. She didn’t have that Jamie, she didn’t have anyone and I wouldn’t let her out. Do you understand my love?” 

“I.. I’m not sure I do Poppins?” Jamie holds onto Dani tightly, awaiting her explanation.

“You thought you didn’t save me Jamie, but you did. Every minute, you saved me from her a little more” Dani just about manages to keep the tears at bay as she pats her chest, just above her heart. 

Jamie herself is tearful as she whispers her next question, “And now?”, she places her hand over Dani’s, interlacing their fingers over her chest.

“She’s there, but she’s fading. All the time, there wasn’t enough room for her”, Dani smiles now, “Jamie, I think eventually she’ll be gone for good.”

Jamie traces her thumb below Dani’s now mottled blue-brown eye, “Is that why….?” Dani purses her lips in a smile and nods, nuzzling into the hand on her face.

Jamie speaks in a low hum, tilts her head towards Dani’s, “Would you like company, love, while we wait for the light in the dark?”

Dani closes her eyes now against tears, a smile, all of her hope now tangible in her hold on the love of her life, existing here with her. She finds Jamie’s other hand, twists her pinky finger around its match and Jamie kisses her then as if she may never stop. 

***

There is no real way of telling how much time passes. Dani and Jamie go about their days hand in hand walking and watching, discovering new things in the world-apart from them all the time.

The manor changes, as do its inhabitants. There are happy times there now, new families who experience the ups and downs of life in the normal ways, without interference. Dani and Jamie revel in the happy moments they witness and share in some sadness too, but never for too long - that being the beauty of life. 

They talk too of Jamie’s life, the one she lived for Dani and indeed with Dani, she now knows. They share the stories, the highlights, now through the perspective of the others memories. There is solace in this life-sharing.

Jamie never loses sight of Dani for more than a moment. She watches her so much in fact, that she almost doesn’t notice the infinitesimal changes of her loves eyes, that one which was once brown, growing brighter with the passing years. 

It feels that for every year they had stolen from them in life, they have had 10 together here, in this slow, sweet bliss. And this is how Dani knows they will soon continue on together, wherever they are going. She feels the bliss in every part of her self now. Her self, no one else’s. Jamie knows it too, she can see it in the others eyes. She does not fear it, because she knows that wherever Dani goes she too will be, the only thing ever holding her here was her love for Dani.

“Oh Poppins,” she sighs, “We have had it good eh?” She looks into Dani’s eyes and smiles, the crooked smirk that she knows is Dani’s favourite. 

“More than good I think,” Dani smiles kissing her hands. 

From the bench they have been cosied up on, Dani gets to her feet. Jamie takes her hand and follows suit. “Where we off to today love?” she chimes.

“I’m not sure, I thought maybe we could just take a walk down that way and see where that takes us?”, Dani’s smile is as warm as it has ever been, as she laces her fingers firmly with Jamie’s. 

“Sounds good Poppins. Anywhere as long as it’s with you.”


End file.
